Essex and the Not so Single Girl

Dating sites. Two words that are guaranteed to strike fear into the heart of the newly-single, and the place where I just happened to meet The Man. We were lucky to meet, actually, given that my experiences leading up to meeting him had included a man who spent the entire date talking to my cleavage, a non-date that was cancelled a few days before it was due to happen with a mysterious text along the lines of, “It’s not going to happen. Don’t ask me why because you won’t like it.” – and the guy from Peterborough I saw a few times who left it four days before answering texts about whether he wanted to meet up at the weekend and was most put out when I arranged to go out with someone else instead!

It’s fair to say that dating sites do attract their fair share of nutters. It’s not just me, The Man had some spectacularly odd dates too, including one who claimed to be a witch and another who stormed out of their date when he got an attack of the giggles at her interview-style questioning…

I think most people who’ve been single in recent years have had a dalliance with internet dating. There’s really no stigma to it these days, and it makes a great topic of conversation over a bottle of wine with the girls (or beer with the boys) Not everyone believes me when I say that my first real taste of Internet dating resulted in me meeting (and falling hopelessly in love with) a recently separated dad who didn’t actually want a girlfriend, but had gone online looking for one anyway, and taken a good two months to get round to telling me that. And introduced me to his kids. And taken me away for a weekend. Hmm. Well I guess that’s what happens when your ex-wife decides she’s a lesbian while you’re still married to her and forgets to tell you she now has a girlfriend. It’s bound to confuse you, isn’t it? We actually ended up good friends for a while, but it was one of the most bizarre relationships (or non-relationships) I’ve ever had!

I could go on…but I’ll leave it there! My advice to anyone thinking of dipping their toe into the murky pond that is online dating is to give it a go. You’ll have to weed out the weirdoes, married ones and people who just want a bit of attention (male and female) but there are some lovely people online, just looking for someone like…you!